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Subjectivity, memory, and the invisible connections between individuals’ identities are all conspicuous themes within filmmaker Shane Carruth’s two award-winning indie sci-fi films, Primer (US 2004) and Upstream Color (US 2013). In this article, I contend that both Primer and Upstream Color are post-secular cinematic parables per philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s description of parable: the conjunction of a narrative form and a metaphorical process, addressing the religious via non-religious discourse. Interpreting these two films through a Ricoeurian parabolic hermeneutic addresses their mutual transcendence in and through time and narrative via their striking visual and auditory aesthetics, the use of montage in their nonlinear narratives, and the depiction of invisible relational connections between the films’ protagonists. I conclude that Carruth’s post-secular cinema resides in an in-between space: between the secular and the religious, realism and expressionism, immanence and transcendence.

In this article, I bring Terrence Malick's 2019 film, A Hidden Life, into conversation with two of philosopher Paul Ricoeur's concepts: (1) the "social imaginary" as the interplay of ideals, images, ideologies and utopias, and (2) Ricoeur's description of the genre of "parable" as a narrative-metaphor which provokes a "re-orientation by disorientation" within an audience's imagination. Drawing from Ricoeur's thought, I apply a theological film criticism I call "theocinematics" to A Hidden Life in order to call attention to the ways in which the cinematic form itself engenders sociopolitical and theological thought. Through emphasizing film aesthetics in my analysis, I am ultimately suggesting that A Hidden Life as a cinematic parable has the potential power to affect and inform our social imaginaries for the good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]